The best thing about Canberra is the air. Now, now – none of your cheek. Not the stuff out of the buffoons we send to the Capital to look after our interests, the gibbering nincompoops whose bluster could power so many of Canberra’s much-photographed hot-air balloons.
No. Rather, we’re talking the sweet, pure, high-country air where Canberra sits, incongruously, atop the Great Dividing Range, the plateau lands at the northern edge of the Australian Alps. Where the weather might be described as ‘crisp’, or, if a southerly sweeps in from snow-capped Brindabellas, ‘Sweet Jesus! It’s Baltic! Lock up the animals!’
For golf, though, the weather is pure. Even when minus temperatures begat a thick morning frost, it means a clear, sunny, still day. Cold, sure. But, at any time, golfers can don the invention known as ‘clothing’. A beanie, a fleece, a body-hugging ‘skin’ of sorts, and you can stride onto that first tee, suck in that cold, sweet air, and set that Hot Dot free.
Enough with the air? So what about the air? So this: because Canberra is quite high – Mount Majura is 888 metres above sea level – the air is relatively thin. And thus, your golf ball will encounter less friction, and know greater penetration, and distance, than it would in the soupy humidity of your coastal flats. It means one less club. It is no bad thing.
You’ll use most of your clubs around the 27 holes of Royal Canberra Golf Club, the spearmint chocolate jewel of the greater Monaro. Royal Canberra is a pristine and manicured property that borders Lake Burley Griffin and the Governor-General’s place at Yarralumla.
The course photographs beautifully, particularly after the mowers have run pretty strips across the fairways, and has claims as the best inland course in Australia. It’s unquestionably the best in ‘the bush’.
“The first thing that most people notice is how picturesque it is,” Royal Canberra’s Golf Operations man, Peter Hayhoe, says. “People are awed by the trees. There’s a lot of big, older style pines. It has a ‘country’ or ‘Augusta’ type feel. There’s also a bit of atmosphere. Depending what time you come, you can get a low fog off the lake, so little bit eery, but very nice.
“And the greens are big and generally fast and firm, which everybody likes. They’re also fairly flat. They’re the toast of the town.”
Royal Canberra is largely forgiving off the tee, even with many holes lined by mighty, long-established pines. Each of the 27 holes become more testing the closer one approaches the tightly-cut, bentgrass greens. Hazards aren’t overly penal (well, the lake doesn’t muck around on 14) but you’ll most often find your ball.
After several, occasionally vexed years of ryegrass on its fairways, Royal Canberra has just rolled out nine holes of Santa Ana couch on the front nine of its original ‘Westbourne’ course, named after an arboretum used to test what sort of introduced species would thrive on the wind-ravaged and tree-less veldt-lands where they’d put the original Parliament House.
It wasn’t as controversial as putting Australia’s Capital closer to Sydney than Melbourne, but, as in any redevelopment or thing that is, you know, ‘new’, there were members who needed convincing. Now that the nine is in play, many are coming across. One member told Golf Australia magazine: “It looks like a championship golf course again.”
Hayhoe says it’ll get even better looking.
“The Santa Ana coach requires less water and maintenance, and with our seasonal, changing conditions, it’s a lot hardier and easier to maintain. When it goes dormant in winter, there’ll be a beautiful contrast between the couch and rough, which is still ryegrass, and which we’re going to grow all the way to the fairway’s edge.
“It’ll be the opposite of Palm Springs in the United States, which has green fairways surrounded by dormant rough. Here the rough will be green and there’ll be a beautiful contrast between the rough, the fairways, the trees, the pine straw,” Hayhoe says.
Royal’s bunkers have had an upgrade, too, with flatter, rivetted faces meaning more consistent outcomes when balls thud in from downtown.
The author’s favourite hole is the short par-4 7th, which at 289 metres from the tips is driveable for the bombers but easily double bogey-able. Rising from the tee box at the edge of the property, it has three fairway bunkers left, and a greenside trap right protecting a small, upturned saucer of a green. Take hybrid, 8-iron and do your best, or go big with the dog – your call, with all numbers on the table.
Hayhoe favours the stretch of holes from 14 to 18. “They’re down along the lake, a couple of par-5s. The 15th has been changed a lot with the OCCM [Ogilvy Clayton Cocking Mead] people. They put a border [a small, rocky stream] in front of the green and it’s a very tricky hole.
“The 18th is a feature hole, down and back up to the clubhouse; a lot of tournaments have been won on 18.” As Warren McCourt of Capital Golf Tours says: “The walk up the 18th fairway is one of the great walks in Australian golf.”
Come October and the ‘Yarralumla’ nine will also be ripped up and laid with Santa Ana couch, while the ‘Brindabella’ nine, designed by Peter Thomson and opened in 1997, will remain with ryegrass fairways as the club prioritises major capital works such as greenkeeper’s shed and washout areas. The strategic plan is for the course to have the same fairway grass on all 27 holes within the next few years.
The Brindabella nine, what locals call ‘out the back’, has an open, fun, ‘linksy’, ‘swaley’ and – if you will - ‘Thommo-esque’ feel, with six holes on the southern side of Dunrossil Drive, the one a new Prime Minister will drive down for the ceremonial sign-on.
I like the par-4 25th hole that travels upwards, over a ridge, demands an approach from the left side – or an extremely high one over some mighty right-side pines – to a flat green with a deep bunker front left. There follows the par-3 16th, which is uphill for 162 metres, with a bunker short right, and two more left and hole-high. Whether you need hybrid or 7-iron, hitting it is fun, even if you won’t see it stick.
CANBERRA TIMES
Almost since its inception, Canberra owned the moniker ‘The City Without a Soul’. It was suburbia, a ‘factory town’ of public servants, with odd rules governing when you could drink beer, and liberal ones when it came to porn, marijuana and firecracker supermarkets.
Today, though, while we weren’t looking, Canberra has grown up. There are 450,000 people in the city, it’s surrounded by cold climate vineyards, and served by funky bars, cafes and restaurants with nouveau cuisine. The golf, as you may have read, is top class.
In the winter you might complement a trip with an ACT Brumbies or Canberra Raiders game at GIO Stadium, or take in Greater Western Sydney at Manuka Oval. Sydney Thunder play T20s at the same venue, and there is the odd one-day international.
The Kingston and Manuka regions are fine spots, as is Braddon just north of the CBD, with several top-quality restaurants, cafes and bars, with one called ‘Public’, on the corner of Flinders Way and Franklin Street, a local favourite.
There is fine fun to be had at the Southern Cross Yacht Club on a Sunday afternoon with music, wine and fish-and-chips by the banks of Lake Burley Griffin. ‘The Dock’, part-owned by former ACT Brumbies players Ben Alexander and Scott Fardy, is one of several bars and restaurants along the popular Kingston Foreshore. In the north, the historic Old Canberra Inn at Lyneham does fine steaks, while at the Kingston Hotel, the famous ‘Kingo’, you could wash down a rib-eye with a glass of cold climate pinot.
You could also fly in a balloon.
Canberra is surrounded by vineyards, all within 20 minutes of the city’s outer skirts. Getting around Canberra is so easy you could fall asleep. From Royal Canberra, for instance, on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, to Federal GC, on the lower reaches of Red Hill, it’s a 4.4-kilometre trip which might take seven minutes in the worst Canberra traffic.
RIGHT: PHOTO: Supplied.
Canberrans don’t have ‘traffic’ as it’s understood by those who live in our major state capitals, they perhaps think they do, but they don’t. If your commute is longer than 30 minutes in Canberra – or if anything, really, is over 30 minutes away – you’re packing lunch.
A seven-minute drive to Red Hill is Federal Golf Club, the fine, native Australian bush course which has long been a standout second-best to its more ‘old Canberra’ near-neighbour. Thomson once said Federal had the best fairways of any inland course in Australia. Then Federal ripped them up and replaced them with couch, despite strenuous objection from some in the membership who wanted their grass to be greener.
Yet with water availability an issue, rainfall inconsistent and Canberra’s highly seasonal temperatures ranging from minus-six in the winter to a combustible 42-degrees in summer, laying couch made sense. And today “the fairways are mint,” according to Federal’s Director of Golf, Andrew Welsford. “The couch fairways here are one reason Royal Canberra’s gone that way,” he says.
Federal kicked plenty of goals over the summer, with good rain keeping the course lush and their dams full. When I visited in March, there’d been no rain for three weeks and the fairways sported various shades from deep green to Richie Benaud’s sports jackets. If you don’t like the colours, that’s your lookout. But as a playing surface, the couch is pure. Long roll. Fine lies. Thommo would have approved.
Federal is a touch ‘up and down’ with the 4th, 9th, 11th and 18th holes heading upwards and the 3rd, 10th and 12th holes travelling down. The rest roll around the Red Hill escarpment, with shades of Sydney’s Monash or Elanora, or the back nine at Narooma. Mighty eucalypts and kangaroos are dominant organisms.
Welsford coached the Singapore national team, played in the Senior Open Championship at Gleneagles in 2022, and is writing a book about his adventures. He’s been at Federal since he was a boy. One of his favourite holes is a spare par-3.
“It’s 11a and a great little hole,” Welsford says. “From the back, it’s really cool. A very ‘country’ feel. Big, tall tree, an amphitheatre feel. Over the back you’re dead, short you’re okay, easy chip. And an undulating green that can get quick. There’s a development plan for the club and this hole will be in play a lot.”
We head to the 12th, par-3, downhill, 198 metres from the back. It runs down into a valley, back up to the green. Bunker front-right. Green sloping back-to-front. Long, strong hole, and index 3.
“Best hole on the golf course,” Welsford observes forthrightly.
“I vehemently disagree,” quips a member nearby who pull-hooks his hybrid into a local Eucalyptus.
Federal begins with a tickle on the par-5 1st, with a wide, sloping fairway meandering down into a valley and back upwards to the green. Long bombers could take on the hill and find a speed-chute, though could find themselves with a downhill lie in the rough for their second shot back up the rise.
The par-3 3rd hasn’t changed in decades – a 166-metre downhiller with a big bunker front right, another left and nothing good long. The par-4 4th is simple and strong. Outwards flat, then steeply upwards to a quick green.
The 5th, known as ‘Tower’, has a line of Canberra Tower. “Now it’s so firm, if you take driver, everything will run down to the left,” Welsford says. “When the fairways are dormant, you get so much run. When you’re talking lines off the tee, it’s about holding the fairways.
“We’ve had an incredibly mild summer, and normally the colour of this course, this time of year, is wheat. It’s getting a little like that. Two weeks ago it was green. So the play here [on five] is hybrid-wedge.”
Another member says: “Federal’s an interesting, and reasonably tough layout. But it’s forgiving; a member’s course – you don’t get beaten up every week.”
Back up to the clubhouse on nine, the index-two, 373 metres, all uphill, dogleg left, boughs of a mighty eucalypt seemingly in the way from the tee. Shorter hitters will rarely hit the multi-tiered green in regulation, and single-figure players, if they’re smart, won’t beat themselves up for five-a-two in stableford competition.
The 17th at Federal is a fine par-5 with views of the snow-capped Brindabellas between a wide-open chute. Big hitters can bomb driver over a rise, and see it roll and roll downtown on the pure couch, leaving maybe 4-iron into a green surrounded by sand.
And then 18, by any stretch, is a beast. It rises gently, hits a dogleg right, rises more steeply, and heads up to a sloping, fast green with two deep bunkers front right. It says 386 metres, it might play 452 metres. It was once a par-5. There are giant trees with overhanging branches that block anything not left. It’s not a hole that single-figure players, again, if they’re smart, should beat themselves up for missing in regulation. Welsford calls it “the hardest par-4 in Canberra.”
Gold Creek Country Club was a series of rocky paddocks under Harcourt Hill until home-grown (well Goulburn is close enough) PGA Tour player turned course designer Bruce Devlin had his way with it, and by 1996 had its official opening, which coincided with hosting the 72-hole Australian Seniors PGA Championship. It was won by Lee Trevino (-6) in a masterclass so good they named the restaurant after him. In very strong winds, Terry Gale (-1) was the only other player under par.
Gold Creek Country Club has since matured into an even tidier championship layout and in 2021 hosted the Australian boys and girl’s amateur championships. Tournament director Trevor Herden said: “The course is undulating, in excellent condition and there is a real buzz amongst the players about playing here … the Gold Creek layout demands patience, but there are a number of scoring opportunities, especially if the prevailing winds off the Brindabella Ranges are calm.”
Wind is always a factor at Gold Creek. Its high position in the hills of the nation’s capital ensuring the flags are never flaccid.
With the wind in mind, grit your teeth on the tee of the par-4 10th if you are playing into the prevailing headwind. At 409 metres, the 10th is Gold Creek’s longest par-4 and ranks No.1 on the card for good reason. A snaking creek borders the left edge of the fairway before turning right and cutting through the fairway just short of the green. It flows into a lake, which guards the right of the putting surface. Into the wind, many players will need a long iron to reach the green and that can conjure up plenty of trouble for a mishit that lands short, left, right or long of the green.
With Yowani out of action, Gold Creek sits on its own as the standout third-best course in the Capital. Gungahlin Lakes, meanwhile, five minutes away up Gundaroo Drive, is rising – and well named, with many attractive, if challenging water carries befitting a stroke rating of 136.
TAKE A CLASSIC TOUR
Organising a golf getaway can be difficult and time consuimg, but it need not be when travelling to Canberra.
Warren McCourt of Classic Capital Golf Tours has 30 years’ experience in the golf and hospitality industries and will organise your tour down to tee-times and cart bookings.
Classic Capital Golf Tours has several packages and deals to suit all golf travellers, including a group package called the Ultimate ACT, which includes golf in the morning at Royal Canberra followed by a cruise in the afternoon on Lake Burley Griffin onboard the MV Southern Cross.
There you will sample it’s 200-mile menu, with produce and wine sourced from within 200 miles of the national capital. Transfers are included if needed but this package is only available Monday
and Thursday.
“We want to take the worry out of people’s golf tours,” McCourt says. “We don’t want people concerned about their trip – we’ll find and book them the best courses for the group, find tee times, suggest the best accommodation and restaurants.
“We’ve been golf travellers ourselves. We know the region and have the local contacts for the courses, the food and entertainment.”
For more information visit www.classiccapitalgolf.com.au or call (02) 6262 0241.
WHERE TO PLAY
Royal Canberra GC: www.royalcanberra.com.au; (02) 6240 2250
Federal GC: www.federalgolf.com.au; (02) 6281 1888.
Gold Creek CC: www.goldcreekcountryclub.com.au; (02) 6123 0601.
Gungahlin Lakes GC: www.ainsliegroup.com.au; (02) 6180 0840.
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